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A searing final novel about the collapse of a marriage and its aftermath, by the author of the modern classic Copenhagen Trilogy.
I want to write a book about Vilhelm's room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise's death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm ...
The ripples from a breakup radiate outward from the room where a married couple once loved each other, and a bizarre Lonely Hearts ad sets off a train of tragicomic events that leads to an inevitable conclusion. Vilhelm's Room, Tove Ditlevsen's final novel―published a year before her untimely death in 1976―is a powerful conclusion to an extraordinary life as a poet, novelist, and memoirist: a blackly funny and devastating tour de force that pulses with life even as it journeys toward death.
"Aching and accomplished ... [A] haunting and deeply felt portrayal of intimate catastrophe." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Memorable, if mostly for its elegantly despairing view of the human condition." —Kirkus Reviews
"Reading Vilhelm's Room, the final novel from the great Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, what hits you first is how wonderful her sentences are ... Ditlevsen's unusual way of seeing the world, and her sprightly humour, run throughout this short book ... Vilhelm's Room is a beguiling, often confounding novel from one of the 20th century's most original writers." ―The Observer (UK)
"Ditlevsen makes this darkest of all material fascinating, perversely likable and occasionally revelatory. She's a brilliant writer and formidable thinker ... a unique and powerful document of catastrophic mental illness." ―The Guardian (UK)
This information about Vilhelm's Room was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties and was followed by many more books, including the three volumes of the Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She died in 1976.
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